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Being a local candidate presents many unique challenges.
Fundraising is particularly challenging, for example: How much do you need? How much should you spend? Many locally elected offices pay next to nothing. In my city, Members of Council earn $8,200 while the mayor gets $55,000 - but all are supposed to be part-time roles. School boards pay even worse here - our school board members, who have to run in EIGHT cities (because we have a regional school district), will receive far less than members of council (I believe it's $3,000 but I've been unable to weed my way through our Board of Elections site to the proper place to find the information).
But as a challenger, you need to plan on spending at least three times what previous winning candidates have spent. What have previous candidates spent? In my city, anywhere from $99.00 (seriously), to over $7,000 or more - for a seat that pays $8,200. I can tell you that I'll be far from the $99.00 because I've had to make my name known, make it mean something, get my message out, and keep getting my message out.
Which brings me to another big challenge - media coverage - that, luckily, has a not too complicated solution, especially for those of us who take advantage of social media and networking in general: the Internet (these BlogHer posts included - hattip to the folks here for allowing and engaging with them) can be a local candidate's best friend.
Colin Delany at e-politics wrote a very nice post about how I've tried to leverage the Internet and social media, not to mention the fact that because I've been on the Internet as a blogger since mid-2005, when you search on my name, or on "Pepper Pike City Council," my name or campaign website is one of the first results. (Local Cleveland bloggy friend Rob Hawkins did something similar for two other local candidates but he mentioned me and I want to be sure to reciprocate.)
Regular media - earned and paid - is a tough thing for local candidates - either because it is so hard to get or because it is prohibitively expensive. Furthermore, due to downsizing and re-tooling of newspapers, the coverage is skanty and left to the local papers.
I don't necessarily dislike that - I think local news is vital and in my community, which is still comprised of more than 50% registered voters 55 years old and older, people read the local papers. These readers do not, as a general proposition, get their news and information so much from the Internet the way I do and probably many of you do. And so, as a local candidate, I need them to be able to read about me whereever they read about anything else.
So one example of how bigger papers are delegating coverage and not leaving local candidates entirely out of the picture is the use of Voter Guide - as with my local metro paper, the Plain Dealer. Voter Guide provides online coverage of local races and the fact is, it can cover far, far more than anything a print newspaper can or will these days. Although it's not the same as reporting (because the candidate fills out everything), in the case of the PD, it's covering 382 races and 688 candidates. I'm just one of those 688 and my race is just one of the 382.
What have other women candidates been up to regarding getting out their message? Here's a look at how some of my sisters-in-arms who are running for local office throughout Ohio are dealing with small cities, big cities and being a challenger or challenged:
Lorrie Sass Benza: I cannot believe I forgot to include Lorrie at the start. Maybe it's one of those "staring in your face" things. Lorrie was the straw that broke the camel's back in making me decide to run for office. A lawyer, mother of three (all under 11), a dedicated work-out person and coach for girl's drill team, she is the epitome of "dynamo." She did a bodybuilding and fitness competition this past fall, all the while running for office, running her family and serving on her town's board of zoning appeals. What made Lorrie's decision to run so influential: I was browsing our local paper several months ago, saw an article about her announcement and recognized the last name as being that of a law school classmate of mine whom I'd always admired (and
